Diagnostics of the Wear of Tribological Assemblies Using an Inductive Wear Debris Counter

Abstract

Analysis of the ways of improving the inductive method for diagnostics of the wear of tribological assemblies by the wear debris and the current state of the developments of inductive particle counters is performed. It is shown that the inductive counters based on the phenomenon of mutual electromagnetic induction that use three volumetric coils are applied to diagnose heavy loaded assemblies; however, in virtue of their restricted sensitivity to fine particles with sizes below 100 μm, the counters in question are not applicable to early diagnostics of the wear of tribological assemblies that operate under medium load and speed rates. To control the condition of the above assemblies, multichannel inductive counters can be used fitted with double-layer planar coils that record ferromagnetic and non-ferromagnetic wear debris with sizes of ≥75 μm. It is demonstrated that to date the highest sensitivity to ferromagnetic wear debris with sizes of ≥11 μm has been achieved in inductive counters the sensing coils of which have cores. The prospective application of such counters is the control at the early stage of wear of assemblies manufactured of ferromagnetic materials.